


It Isn't Over, It's Just Begun

by Crimson1, sugarybowl



Series: Let me tell you a story about war: [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Earth-17, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 15:58:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10620261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crimson1/pseuds/Crimson1, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarybowl/pseuds/sugarybowl
Summary: Bart Allen carries untapped power and an overwhelming loneliness, Leo Snart may be the key to both of those things.A glimpse of Bart and his Leo long before the events of "In the Wrong Kind of Light".





	

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of backstory for Bart and Leo - so many thanks to Crimson for reviving this verse with me!

Bart Allen is hungry, you can see it in his eyes. It's a contagious sort of hunger that made Leo want to grab more treasure and land and power – against all better judgement – to sate the need in his belly. Really, he knows, it's a need that only the boy himself can satisfy.

Leo had kept eyes on him since the quiet note in the city records told of his disappearance from one of the city’s too many group homes for meta-human orphans. They were child prisons where the city could wash their hands of them and which Leo had been frustratingly incapable of dissolving.

The homes kept tight and sealed records of the children in their care, but as soon as any of them escaped, as trapped doves are wont to do, the homes were required by law to open their dossiers, that the city might know what new glorious terror had been unleashed upon them. Leo remembers receiving the file from Lisa’s own hands, her smile bright and delighted.

“Happy birthday, Leo,” she’d whispered while their father slept.

_Bartholomew Henry Allen, ward of the state, aged 15._

_Marks: along the central and upper chest._

_Meta-physiology: speed._

Speed. So understated, as if a creature like that weren’t mythical. Word on them being that they were among the first kind of meta to ever walk the Earth, passing the wisdom of their kind from one to the next, facilitating their swift disappearance from the Central City scene when the going got rough. But here one was, a child abandoned by life and fate. Or perhaps, Leo thought, fated for this life all along.

“Sounds like treasure,” he told his sister.

“Thought you’d appreciate it,” she said with a grin, “that’s why I told you before we reported him to father. Should we send out for him?”

With instinct and instinct alone, Leo clutched the pathetically thin file to his chest.

“No,” he said, with no room for discussion.

“No?”

“Lisa… someone like this is invaluable and more than father can handle. We cannot afford to scare someone like him off.”

Lisa nodded, though her soft frown showed her confusion plainly.

“So… we let him go?”

“We let him be,” he whispered, tucking the file into a drawer, “the time for him to join us will come.”

Now that the time _has_ come, Leo realizes that the boy is more than he’d dreamed him to be. His power is glorious and yes, he will make the most lethal weapon. But he’d never realized where the danger in Bart Allen truly lived until he saw him in person, until he looked into his eyes and realized that it wasn’t speed or wit or raw power that made him a force of nature. It was just that Bart Allen wanted something - wanted it badly - and they would have to hold their breath to find out what that was.

\--

Bartholomew Allen loved his city. He knew that people thought it was scum, a meta-infested hole to be kept separate from the rest of the world. Their only kindred was Keystone and even they looked down on what Central had become. Even so, he loved it. To him, the soot shadowed alleys told stories and the ever present clouds brought stories in the raindrops that stung his face. Most of all, he loved the thunder. When the storms brought thunder, he felt less alone as he ran. When the storms brought thunder, he thought perhaps he could be a part of them, a part of the light and sound and rain. He could have hundreds and thousands of brothers and sisters in every frozen drop that shattered against the cracking streets.

He loved his city, there was no doubting it, but he could never help but feel alone in it. The streets deserted as they are, the brightened parts of town so inaccessible to him – it seems that he could go days and weeks without setting eyes on another soul.

He knows they’re out there, others like him. Men and women with scars like his. He was born marked and branded, and more often than not he wondered if his parents had perished or left him for dead. For years he hated the ugly markings across his chest, until his body began moving so fast that it seemed a thought alone pulled him away from that wretched place – and since then he has loved every jagged curving imperfection on the surface of his skin.

Maybe that's why he so loved the city. Moving at that speed of his for so long without anyone to stop him, without anyone to touch him or to give him a word, it seems as if every day he was becoming less a person and more a fixture of the beautiful broken land. He remembers too clearly waking in a cold sweat, alone and shaking, from a dream that told him he would run so fast that he would simply cease. And who would know? In a city like this, beloved to him as it might be, he's hard pressed to find another to witness him. To talk to him. To touch him if only to remember the sensation of another standing near.

On the upside of his solitude, there is no one there to hear him scream. There is no one there to see him cower in his makeshift home, behind towers of books and games, knickknacks and treasures, cornering himself and crying like the lonely wretch he's always been.

On certain days and particular nights, the temptation to run until there's nothing of him left to feel the loneliness is too much for him. It was on one of those nights that he found out he had never truly been unseen, that every empty night someone had been waiting and watching.

Mick Rory found him on a night of silence and overwhelming darkness. He’d been watched by _them_ for so long, Rory told him, held for a rainy day like the death of Lewis Snart.

The word around Central was that Leonard Snart, prince of the mob, had killed his father stone dead with the same icy powers that Lewis had touted were his best weapon. Everyone knew that Lewis Snart was a terrible Boss – but his son’s powers drew in other criminal metas and that was all Lewis needed to call the shots in town. Now Lewis Snart was dead and he never thought he’d be relieved someone was dead but he’d always feared that Snart’s henchmen would come for him in the night.

A speedster was a valuable thing, he knew, especially for someone who collected metas to use as weapons. But now Lewis was dead and his son rose to power with the fervent devotion of every Rogue that had joined the Snart Family for him. Sometimes, when he saw the CCPD spokesperson speak about Snart the younger’s tactical skill, he could see the unmasked awe in their eyes. Leonard Snart was smart and powerful and now the city held its breath to see what would become of them with him in power in a city where the government never held a candle to the wishes of the mob.

When Mick Rory asked him if he was in or he was out, he knew the man wasn’t really asking. Maybe a year ago he would have refused and run off further and faster than anyone could follow. But it had been so long and he had been so lonely that anything, even a den of real bonafied thieves, was an offer he could never refuse.

“Yeah,” he said, feeling breathless, “yeah, I’m coming.”

\--

Bart Allen is hungry, there's no hiding it. Mick had brought him in, all boyish eyes full of more hope than Leo has seen in years, but there behind that lies hunger like a lioness in wait.

His speedster, he thinks, at last. As he watches Allen demonstrate his skill with a few hundred turns about the room, he marvels at the most powerful of metas, the rarest creature to slit through the Earth and here he is served on a pair of silver sneakers. He feels instantly possessive of the boy, of his powers, and of his beauty.

“Tell me Bart,” he says as he walks over to the boy, slow as if not to startle him, “may I call you Bart?”

“No one ever has,” the boy says softly.

“Good,” Leo says just as softly, “so then. Will you be my Rogue?”

“Well…” he starts as if considering a mid-range offer, “what would that mean?”

“It means, kid,” he says as he stands still at last to loom only slightly over the boy who is as tall as himself, “the city will be your playground, the glory of my heists will be shared with you and the payouts that go with it. It means my Rogues are your family and your loyalty is to mine. So tell me, are you mine?”

Bart looks into his eyes with his own shining hungry ones. The look they share takes Leo's breath away, though he is careful not to let it show. In that moment he wonders whether the boy’s powers extend beyond speed what with the bolt of electricity that seems to run in the space between them.

“Yes,” the boy breathes out, “I’m yours.”

\--

Weeks pass like a dream in Snart’s palace. It had once been Central City High, before the need for metal detectors and state-of-the-art technology had forced the school into a blocky awful thing on the upper edge of the city. Now this building with its structures made for beauty as well as function serve as headquarters and home to the ruling class of the city, the metas who Snart deemed loyal enough to make up his inner circle. His Rogues.

He relishes in his new nickname and his new title. Bart Allen, Central City Rogue. It so much like a dream come true that the thought of it slipping away one cold morning chokes him at unexpected moments.

“Why the sour face, fresh?”

Bart looks up to find Hartley Rathaway sitting across from him, chin in his hands and a smug sort of disdain in his eyes. Bart couldn’t quite believe it when he saw Hartley at first, and it had taken him some time to reconcile the images of a sickly teenager sprawling over the front page of every newspaper for weeks so many years ago. But here he was, looking the picture of health and – dare he think it – happiness.

Bart shifts in his seat and tries to demure his discomfort around the other man.

“I’m fine.”

“You look miserable,” Hartley declares, “Are your accommodations not up to par? Mick tells me he fished you out of a grimy warehouse, must be the Ritz for you here.”

He leans in across the table to whisper in a theatrical sort of way, “ _And_ you’re taking up precious storage space.”

It takes Bart’s every effort not to lean over and punch him.

“My room is fine.”

“Fine? Tell that to the brooms you’ve displaced from their ancestral home,” he says, leaning back in triumph.

“Hart-“

Bart doesn’t realize he is glaring daggers until he’s forced to look up at the new player in their scene, Rory looming large and steadily terrifying as ever.

Hartley keeps his eyes on Bart, his face twisting into a sickening sweet smile.

“Yes?”

“I need you,” the other man grinds out.

“And I you,” Hartley says, addressing Rory while winking at Bart for some deranged reason.

“Quit it,” Rory says as he moves forward and sets a hand steady and heavy on Hartley’s shoulder, “get your ass over to the armory.”

Hartley gives an exaggerated sigh before he wraps his hand around Rory’s scarred fingers. It shocks Bart more than he’d care to admit to see Hartley stroke his thumb over those fingers in a gentle gesture. It seems so genuine, so intimate, unlike anything Bart has ever seen. Before he can shake himself out of his reverie, both men are more than half way gone.

His thoughts are still wandering on the moment of closeness between the two when another figure settles down in front of him. Lisa Snart is beautiful in an absolutely terrifying sense, she and her brother have that in common. She sets her hands in front of her in a delicate sort of way, her glimmering nails as distracting as jewels.

“Don’t mind Hartley,” she tells him, “he wasn’t socialized as a child.”

“Is it true?” Bart asks, terror overridden by his own curiosity, “Everything about him in the papers?”

“Never everything,” she says as she gives him a tiny shrug, “but I’m sure some of it is. What’ve you heard?”

“That he was kidnapped by Rory when he was 15,” Bart whispers, “and that he’s been kept prisoner by –well by you all since then.”

Lisa laughs and Bart isn’t sure if he feels joy or fear at the sound of it.

“Does he look like a prisoner to you?”

“No,” he admits.

“Kidnapping is such a relative term anyway,” she says, laughter still hiding in her voice.

“It is?”

“Sure is. I think they prefer the term liberated.”

Bart thinks for a moment about whether he should show himself to be some kind of gossip but can’t really help himself from asking.

“Liberated from what?”

“His prison tower of course,” she says as she settles in her seat as if preparing herself for a longer stay.

“The Rathaways were long standing royalty ‘round here. They would have been forever if we hadn’t started popping up like daisies by the hundreds and thousands. Suddenly the city was full of the truly wonderful and powerful and the Rathaways thought it fit to try and lock us up – exterminate us. Imagine their horror when their son and heir, their precious prince, was born with Marks carved up his calves?”

“Hartley? I… I didn’t know that Hartley was a meta too.”

“You think we keep ‘im around cause he’s pretty?”

Bart grins at that, “I think Mick might.”

Lisa laughs again, jingling like bells or sharp knives, “You’re a delight, don’t let Hart tell you otherwise.”

Bart hopes that he isn’t blushing but he knows very well that he might.

“Thanks.”

“So,” she says sharply as she leans closer to him, “tell Aunty Lisa what has got you so unhappy.”

“It’s nothing really.”

“Nothing? You know,” she hums, taking a sudden interest in her nails, “if you really don’t want to be here…”

“No! I mean I do. I really do, I’m so happy,” he nearly shouts, all in a rush, “I mean honored I…I want to be here. More than anything.”

“But?”

“It’s just I’ve been here for weeks training just as hard as anyone else but I’m still benched from every job. The Calvin Headquarters? I could have done that in seconds all by myself,” he says, remembering his disappointment and the edge of his anger all over again.

“Exactly.”

Bart’s confusion dampens the edge of anger that had started wrapping itself around his voice.

“I don’t follow.”

“Exactly,” she repeats, “you’d probably make it off well on your own on one or two jobs and then you’d get yourself caught or hurt or bored. And you don’t know how to follow orders. That’s why you’re not fit for the job yet. You gotta trust my brother with your skills and your life before he trusts you with ours.”

“I would do anything for your brother,” he says, a burst of earnest passion in every word.

“That’d be music to his ears,” she says, “but he’ll know when you’re ready and you have to trust that too.”

“And until then? I just free-load here and let Hartley remind me of it?”

“No one said you have to free-load. There’s tons to do around here for a quick mind and quicker hands. You can take care of our equipment and help Hartley and Axel tweak it.”

“I doubt that Hartley would let me anywhere near the hardware,” he says with a twinge of bitterness. Hartley seemed to do as he pleased around here, making his earlier questions silly to his own ears. No one could mistake him for a prisoner the way he plucked the weapons from every Rogue as soon as they stepped in the door and tutted and whined about how they’d mistreated them.

“True,” Lisa sighs, “You could help Baez patch us up. She always appreciates an extra hand and we do get roughed up on the regular. The job is a harsh mistress and most of us don’t have magical healing powers.”

“Lotta good they do me if I’m just here putting band-aids on everyone who actually gets to –“

“See? You’re not ready,” she points out again with a little more force this time, “you resent teamwork and that isn’t going to get you out on the streets any faster.”

“And after I pay my dues… then he’ll let me come on jobs?”

“Honey I promise you,” she says as she takes hold of his hand. It almost takes Bart’s breath away, being touched like that, held in any small way. He tries not to let the emotion come in full display as he luxuriates in the tiny gesture.

“The things my brother is dreaming up for us when you’re ready? They’re on another level. You’re gonna help him make masterpieces to make the CCPD cry,” she says fervently before pulling her hand away. It breaks his heart but brings his attention back to her words.

“But not yet.”

“Okay,” he says, more of a challenge to himself than an admission of defeat, “I’ll wait. Until he trusts me. I will show him that he can trust me.”

She stands with a pleased grin on her beautiful shaded lips and leaves him there with his hunger and the faint whisper of a touch on his fingertips.

\--

“You should keep that kid on a leash,” Mick says as he makes his way into his office as he’s always done, without preamble or pause.

“Funny I was about to say the same about your precious one,” Leo says without looking up from his work.

“Hartley’s being Hartley, you practically raised him so you should know what that is.”

“I do indeed, so tell me,” he says, eyes still cast on his work, “what is it about our newcomer that merits a leash?”

“Don’t fuck around, you’ve seen it too. He’s boiling and not everyone around here’s up for a burn.”

“Maybe you should tell your beloved to stop poking the goddamn pot Mick, if you’re so worried.”

“Why aren’t you? Kid’s a tickin’.”

“I’m aware,” he drawls out, “have a little faith, Mick.”

Mick’s patience has always been short, but usually he knows better than to make a fuss about bringing his point across. Not now though, not when he feels any true danger is going to come to his and theirs. Mick plants his hands on Leo’s desk, rattling everything on the surface just enough that Leo acquiesces and meets his eyes.

“You think you can control him, like you do everythin’ else. But you and I’ve been around long enough to see a lot of power and a lot of crazy and that kid’s a lot of both. If you think he can’t kill you- Leo you’re good. But he’s a fucking speedster. Stuff out of nightmares –“

“So are we.”

“You arrogant son of a bitch,” Mick bites out, “you’re gonna get us all killed.”

“Do you really think I’d bring someone deranged into our home and expose our people to-”

“Yeah, I damn well do. You’ve been obsessed with him ever since you heard about him. It’s screwin’ with you.”

“If you don’t trust me anymore, Mick, after all this time then I suggest you rethink-“

“I trust ya more than the sun,” Mick growls, “it’s a temperamental shit and it doesn’t always wanna rise but you’re clockwork. What I don’t trust is you thinkin’ with yer loins.”

“Oh is that what this is about,” he laughs, leaning back in his seat, “I thought we closed this argument when you found your fairytale prince.”

“I ain’t jealous Leo,” Mick says, with a calm that is very near unnatural in him, “I’m worried. And when I’m the worried one between you an’ me? Don’t that make you think?”

“I have thought this through,” Leo says, trying to appease his one constant – as unnerving as the thought is, “though I admit there were things I didn’t expect about him.”

“You’re better than a pair of pretty eyes, Leo.”

“So you admit he’s pretty,” he says with a smirk.

“Leonard.”

“Trust. Me. Like you always have,” Leo half-orders, half-pleads.

“I do.”

“Then relax. And if you’re so damn worried, keep your boy away from him. He could provoke a white cloud to strike him dead, our Hartley. And this boy is already stormy gray.”

Leo doesn’t miss it that Mick keeps Hartley close after that. At meals, in trainings – and when Leo orders Bart to take up helping Hart and Axel with their toys he thinks Mick will take a swing at him for it, but he only glares from across the room and gives him an inch of a nod. Mick’s trust is unyielding, it always has been.

He also doesn’t forget for a second what Mick said to him. As if outside his own body he observes as he orbits Bart like a satellite. With a pang of panic, he realizes that he can’t help himself.

Oh, he can control his urges, keep himself from curling around the boy at every dark corner and having his wicked way with him. It wouldn’t be worth it, he could never stomach knowing that someone was letting him out of fear instead of desire. But he couldn’t help putting his eyes on him at every turn, sneaking a touch here and there, and speaking soft to him.

He delights in Bart’s every display of power, even as the others look at him as something awful in every sense of the word. They stand in awe and horror at his lightning and Leo stands transfixed by the thought of what they could be together. Lightning and ice, acts of God, nothing could stand against them and Leo – he always got what he wanted, but part of him took pleasure in coveting. Part of him wanted to revel in this longing until something gave, his own control or Bart’s own need. So he settles to wait and watch the chips fall where they may, Leo is a patient man, after all.

\--

Bart is not stupid, he’s heard things about Snart. He knows how the man commands attention, how he takes what he wants, and has everyone’s loyalty. He can get anyone he wants in his bed and no one would dare refuse him. But what’s strange is there aren’t many stories about him doing that. He’s had lovers, every corner with a Rogue in it was always whispering about Snart so he’d heard plenty, but none were quite what Bart expected to hear.

Still, the way Snart looks at him, hangs around him, just some skinny nobody who sure, is a speedster, but Bart knows he isn’t like these other Rogues. He’s lived on his own for so long that he’s more like a feral cat than a proper criminal, he knows that. If Snart is hanging around him so much, he either still doesn’t trust him enough or he wants more from him. 

Since Bart has already been allowed to help the Rogues prep for several jobs, to touch their weapons, and be responsible for their escape plans. Snart must trust him on some level and so it has to be sex he’s after. Honestly, Bart is excited about the prospect as much as he’s afraid. And he is afraid, there’s no doubt about that – ever since he joined up with the Rogues, ever since he swore his loyalty to Snart, his life has been equal parts elation and terror.

Bart’s a virgin and the fact makes up no small part of his fear. He’s been lonely for so long, and Leonard Snart - this gorgeous, powerful _king_ of Central City - wants him. He thrums with anticipation every time Snart gets close or casually touches him, trembling from the slight chill the ice meta gives off that Bart finds more invigorating than uncomfortable.

He waits, wondering when Snart will make his move, when he’ll corner him and order him to his room, whisper in his ear with roaming hands that won’t take no for an answer…but nothing happens. Snart has him alone plenty. Orders him to his room, and various other rooms, plenty, but never for anything sexual. He touches Bart’s shoulder, the small of his back, his wrists in a way that seems so intimate, but never more. Every touch leaves him a little more breathless, a little more starved for the next fix. Snart whispers and grins and eyes Bart in a way that he thought was longing, but maybe he’s all wrong about this and Snart doesn’t want him at all.

Bart doesn’t get it. He thought he was Snart’s, he thought that meant something. He thought finally someone wanted him the way no one else ever had, but then why won’t Snart do anything about it?

Nearly two months have gone by and Bart has more than proven himself. He’s learned everything he can, made test runs, and listened to everything Snart asks of him. Finally, after Bart’s first successful heist with the Rogues, he thinks— _Now, now he’ll come for me after seeing how useful I can be, now that he knows he can truly trust me._

But still, Snart doesn’t ask anything of him, just smiles, grips Bart’s shoulder, and says, “Good job, kid.”

It’s infuriating. Finally, Bart is surrounded by people who don’t look down on him, save maybe Hartley, but he’s still alone. He can’t stand it.

That night, he’s trying to sleep, trying to calm down, but he’s not thinking straight and finally erupts out of bed and flashes through the building that’s more like a palace for how Snart has it tricked out to accommodate his Rogues, and does something so bold and shameless that he isn’t fully convinced he’ll live through it. He phases into Snart’s room and attacks him head-on, grabbing the man from where he’d been pouring over blueprints at a desk and slams him against the wall.

“Something I can help you with, Bart?” Snart asks only too calmly for someone assaulted by a speedster.

Bart seethes. “You said I’m yours. Am I really?”

“You are,” Snart says with a sudden intensity. For a moment Bart feels their places reversed as if somehow he were the one being pinned by the other man’s eyes. But he holds the man up just a little tighter thinking that if he’s in for this he might as well be all the way in.

“Then you should be  _mine_.”

“Is that so?” His smirk and the eye-glance down Bart’s body is  _maddening_.

“If you don’t want me, then…then why do you  _look_  at me like that?” Bart doesn’t wait for an answer. He flashes them across the room to the bed, with Snart on the edge and Bart climbing into his lap, holding him down. “You should be mine. I’m yours, I want to be yours, and you should be  _mine_. Even if you only want my powers, I don’t care…” Bart goes for a kiss, but Snart holds him back.

“Oh, kid…you have no idea how much I want you for more than your powers.”

“Then why—”

“I have been waiting for  _this_. For you to come to me. If I’d have asked you to share my bed, you would have given in simply because of who I am,” he explains, his tone somehow suggesting that Bart should have figured out that twisted web all on his own.

Bart stares, letting the truth of it sink in, because no one says no to Snart.

“Now I know you want this. Now I know that hunger in your eyes is more than greed of any natural born criminal. Now I know you’re hungry for me and Bart, my beautiful  _flash_  of lightning,” he strokes Bart’s face, “I’ll be yours. I am all yours, only yours, and you’re mine. Because I am _starving_ for you.”

He kisses him— _finally_ —deep and claiming and everything Bart had been hoping for.

“Only mine,” Bart echoes, kissing him again, and again, and again, as they start to rock on the bed. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, has no experience, no real frame of reference for how to begin, but Snart grabs him and tumbles them onto the bed so he can lead. Bart trembles at his touch.

“You want this, Bart? Want me?”

“I do,” Bart says quickly, trying to make his shaking settle down, he’s just nervous. “It’s only that…I-I’ve never…no one’s ever touched me before.”

Snart grins madly. “Good.”

Good isn’t the half of it. Snart thrills Bart, every touch of ice and lightning mingling feeling better than the last.

“ _Snart_ …” Bart moans.

“Leo, kid. You call me Leo.”

**Author's Note:**

> Working on this verse with Crimson is a dream - hope you're all enjoying the pain!  
> (All titles in this series borrowed from the works of Richard Siken)


End file.
